DC Universe Online will launch in North America for PC and PlayStation 3 on January 11, 2011, reports IGN, who say that the UK launch for the superhero MMORPG will follow on January 14. They offer a list of the game's PS3 trophies, and an interview with Game Director Chris Cao discussing the date, subscription fees, lessons learned from the beta, tips for new players, and more.

By the time 2011 starts I suspect they will be on the last 3-5 days of the beta. Every MMO I've ever betaed for shut down 7 to 10 priors to release to get their servers wiped, imaged, setup, tested for release day and/or headstarts.

It's kinda bad when their queue system takes hours to get you into missions. The only thing I've seen pop reliably within 10 minutes are 'Alerts' and most times you join to find you're on a team with 1 or 2 other people and one is AFK or doesn't know how to play with others. They run off solo, die a lot..then quit.

The game is decent.....I mean if they could prove that the game had content to last 6 months it might be worth the buy for people who have more tolerance for bugs, random server disconnects and client crashes.

However, you have 6 powers to use. There's 8 buttons, but 1 is your "heal potion" and the other is a trinket.

If they did 8 powers it'd be a better situation at least because your "supercharge" using powers...you don't get to use them very often and if you keep 2 on your bar..you're down to 4 powers to use. If you could toggle between modes or bars...or something maybe.

That irritates me to no end, and I don't take PS3 limitation as a reason for making it so restrictive. It's by far the most annoying design decision so far that repeatedly comes back to bug you each time you get a new power and you have to decide for each and every type of encounter if your bar is appropriate.

Then you have the client crashes and disconnects. The game crashes once an hour minimum. It usually crashes again once I load up...or disconnects.

Group chat often does not work, and if it does it had a lot of unnecessary censorship. For instance if you say "What about it?" People see "What abou####?" or the like. Because of T it.

League chat often does not work, same bugs as group basically.

The running window for chat is worthless because quest text is dumped into your chat window plus loot plus whatever else by default. So if you're in an alert and trying to speak...most people will miss it. It leads to a lot of frustration in the NPC alerts.

Also the NPC alerts, Gorilla mission specifically, you get locked into cutscenes everytime you approach a place. And if you don't hit it up high where the NPCs won't aggro, you'll come out of the cutscene surrounded by gorillas/apes who kill you once it's over. I dunno how many times I've seen this happen in instances, someone always dies if you don't stay clustered up on approach...and if you wipe it happens over and over and over. Plus the cutscenes are just annoying as all hell the third time is happens and you can't get out.

The "ping" on the minimap to alert you of stuff is useless, it pings on stuff I've already gotten, it pings on stuff I can't locate..it pings all the time. It's 90% useless...it also doesn't indicate color of the ! it's detecting..it's always yellow pinging for me.

Superspeed and acrobatics....they are kinda fun but they are buggy. It is faster and more useful to pick flying because flying seems to not interact as poorly with the environment right now.

In superspeed you'll get caught on the side of buildings running little circles on parts that at lower speeds normally don't do that. So you have to have a vertical face that is perfectly straight or continually recedes, never jutting out. Otherwise you have to turn on and off the "boost" to run up a building without getting caught or perfectly jump constantly.

Acrobatics, the rocket pack is useless inside the watchtower/hall of doom. You fly straight to the ceiling when you turn it on. So you have to turn it on and off or just slow climb everywhere BECAUSE.......... grappling hooks are useless in general. The distance to use on sidewalls is short. The distance on the vertical climbs are usually blocked by outcroppings or some other design flaw in the system. It might have it's uses in PVP, but as a method to facilitate movement....it fails..it's actually slower in most cases to try to grapple because you fall back nearly the distance you grappled in the first place if it isn't perfect...and it fails a lot.

People can "take" your quest objectives...grouping solves it. But then grouping breaks the inside missions..you miss out on loot. And often times someone will be locked out of the boss encounter if they lag even slightly behind someone who gets into the room first and triggers the cutscene. End up with 1 person getting loot, one person not helping on boss...and it's just a PITA annoying thing that should not happen.

Also, more people fighting in some spots causes NPCs to spawn faster. So people can literally keep you fighting forever while they take your objectives...since NPCs tend to gang up on already fighting PCs over non-involved ones. And a lot of powers are AOE and you'll involve them by mistake. The Brainic mission last step where you have to disable radio towers is a good example of this. 5 people fighting in that small space can leave 2-3 people fighting non-stop while 2 finish without fighting at all.

New patch broke working powers, or does not make powers work like their descriptions would indicate. Fire line has a few of these. I have not had a chance to play much of the others.

Also new patch introduced some sort of bug where stuff is unbreakable. I was in a vault run where I couldn't smash any presents, so I couldn't get out. Also was in an alert where it was bugged and nothing was spawned...but it still thought you had to do the mission...but didn't point to anything.

Replay of the game...you basically run the same missions for the most part on every guy you make depending on the alignment (hero/villain). There is an exception of the "core" mentor mission and I think you can only get those prior to level 6. So you might not be able to repeat those...but everything else is repeated...or it's a major major major major grind to level off killing.

Queue system is just a colossal screw up...it'll pit you with a team of 2 versus a team of 4....had it happen a number of times. Even though there were more people available, it would let them freely leave and join with no consequences. These are like 10 minutes max encounters, usually 5 minutes.

Free for all play, other people can't heal you. They can't direct their heals at you, so you have to group to get heals. Which I understand to some degree, but a lot of these free roaming bosses are hard as hell and people just join in...so you can't easily group up when the bosses can kill you in 2-3 big hits..not without running away and starting over. They clearly meant for this stuff to be possible, so why is it so touchy and annoying about how it handles it?

I mean there's a lot of issues with the game, like really f-in annoying things. And I was thinking March as a release...I considered that to be the "well maybe they'll address this annoying shit plus fix the bugs". I think now you'll be lucky to get "doesn't crash or disconnect" by release date now. Especially with the holidays messing with their timelines.

And I for one am unforgiving to games that feel they should push forward release dates to capitalize on something, especially when the game is clearly not as it should be. While I think the game would be successful if it were working properly and had some of the niggling things fixed, I have to admit I hope it suffers releasing as it is. It's just not acceptable for a game under SOE control to be release in that state considering how long SOE has been in the market. They should have this stuff figured out, and it should come out with finished product. The only major problems I would consider to be acceptable would be over expected amount of sales causing servers to buckle under the load...and only for it to plague the game for about a week and that time be added onto people's accounts for free.

But content light, broken, and poorly designed for PC games should not be successful for companies that should have the means and methods to button up a game before release. SOE is boning yet another MMO release. And I suspect Planetside 2 to be the same if not worse since they don't have DC looking over their shoulder for it.

Cutter wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 11:32:Cutter nailed it folks. Great looking game, runs smoothly, but even more limited in character creation then City of Heroes/Villains.

Yep, gotta agree here. I've been in the 'press' beta since Turkeyday, and it just doesn't have the ability to hold my attention. And since every action is click activiated, its like a 3D Diablo (the first Diablo, remember those click attacks per swing? ITS BACK!)

This is a console game and shouldn't even bother with PC sales. Its interface is just too clunky as well (ala vanilla Oblivion).

Was hoping that the last 8.6gig patch/client would have change the gameplay somehow, but alas, it did not.

Is there some backend requirement by Sony that PS3 buttons have to be used for actual abilities/actions rather than toggles for different control sets? I see no reason why you couldn't make multiple sets of 6 functions and tie a different set to holding down the L1 / R1 buttons. or better yet use the dpad, each direction is a set of 8 functions.

Don't confuse limitations with the PS3/360 versus bad decision by the developers. Plenty of games now use a toggle that brings up a radial menu to select a lot of different options off of one master button. Hell Mass Effect uses it extensively.

Those are SOEs words verbatim when testers requested more ability slots. Their words, not mine.

The Half Elf wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 16:35:Cutter nailed it folks. Great looking game, runs smoothly, but even more limited in character creation then City of Heroes/Villains.

Pretty much, yeah. It's a watered down version of Champions Online, which was a watered down version of City of Heroes.

It looks great, though, and the voice acting is a nice touch. Character creation was incredibly disappointing and the gameplay is so simplistic that I just couldn't get into it at all, however. I don't know what they were going for here...it's a great showcase of the license with comatose gameplay.

If you want to make a console superhero game, fine. That can be fun. Make it play like one, though, not like a PC MMO with neutered abilities and options and then shoehorned into a limited console control scheme.

UHD wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 12:01:There's no reason DCO can't succeed on a subscription model.

The problem is thinking about success in terms of WoW. You can't do that. You'd only hurt yourself shooting for those numbers (hi, Warhammer). You can have a fraction of WoW's userbase numbers and still be successful with subscriptions. Can you match WoW's scale and polish with a tenth of the userbase (like, say, City of Heroes)? No. But you can still have a successful game.

It has nothing to do with the success of WoW. The game itself is VERY limited by what you can do with the powers they offer.And for the record, there is NO COMPANY that offers the level of polish that Blizzard does, or even comes close on a Single Player/Multiplayer/MMO scale.

Using a steering wheel on a Burnout game is like using the Space Shuttle controls to fly a kite.

Cutter wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 11:32:Unless you're prepare to play a console game on your PC I'd cancel. It's a shame because the game really does have good potential. However, it's pure 100% put together for the PS3. And while it's fun in small doses it's very shallow. I couldn't imagine ever subbing to it. F2P with a few microtransactions here and there would be as far as I'd go with it.

Also the character creation is far too limited for a superhero game which is simply unforgivable.

Cutter nailed it folks. Great looking game, runs smoothly, but even more limited in character creation then City of Heroes/Villains.

Using a steering wheel on a Burnout game is like using the Space Shuttle controls to fly a kite.

Steele Johnson wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 12:03:I can't imagine any new mmo that's subscription based doing well. I think WoW pushed it to the limit and now the genre has to change. Since so many people have had WoW accounts (or still do), I can't see anyone subbing a new one that has generally the same mechanics. MMO 2.0 has been played to death. The genre needs to change or be updated to something more engrossing for people to willingly pay a monthly sub. Until that happens, the MMO 2.0 market will continue to decline.

12 million WoW subscribers and something like 4 million Cataclysm sales on day one say that market is not dead. The problem is no one but Blizzard is putting a product out there that justifies the price and loyalty.

The Old Republic certainly plans to try and change that... will it be the one? Probably not.

I apparently didn't make myself clear. As I've stated "I can't imagine any "NEW" mmo that's subscription based doing well." The point is that if you currently have a WoW account, that's all you really need given that the game mechanics for all of these games are roughly the same, only using a different skin. That's why tons of these games have been failing over the years. They offer nothing new over your standard MMO 2.0 features. Might as well play the best game of the bunch, which I can easily say is WoW. I think the majority of mmo players feel that way.

Is there some backend requirement by Sony that PS3 buttons have to be used for actual abilities/actions rather than toggles for different control sets? I see no reason why you couldn't make multiple sets of 6 functions and tie a different set to holding down the L1 / R1 buttons. or better yet use the dpad, each direction is a set of 8 functions.

Don't confuse limitations with the PS3/360 versus bad decision by the developers. Plenty of games now use a toggle that brings up a radial menu to select a lot of different options off of one master button. Hell Mass Effect uses it extensively.

Steele Johnson wrote on Dec 21, 2010, 12:03:I can't imagine any new mmo that's subscription based doing well. I think WoW pushed it to the limit and now the genre has to change. Since so many people have had WoW accounts (or still do), I can't see anyone subbing a new one that has generally the same mechanics. MMO 2.0 has been played to death. The genre needs to change or be updated to something more engrossing for people to willingly pay a monthly sub. Until that happens, the MMO 2.0 market will continue to decline.

12 million WoW subscribers and something like 4 million Cataclysm sales on day one say that market is not dead. The problem is no one but Blizzard is putting a product out there that justifies the price and loyalty.

The Old Republic certainly plans to try and change that... will it be the one? Probably not.

I like it *shrug* I will probably pay the 200 for the lifetime as well, as I think I will play it longer then the first year. The game plus 3 months is 100 bucks, so it seems to make sense to me. They have an excellent base to build off of and a good license, I think it will do fine.

Then again....I thought Champions Online would get significantly better as well...and we see how that went..so ignore my superhero fanboy-ism for the most part.

Personally I will wait for a trial to hit. I've bought to many MMOGs over the years that were complete failures at launch. Not saying this game will be terrible but I'm not willing to wager $50 on that question.

"We can do this one of two ways. There's the hard way, which involves hours of discussion, tons of negotiation, half a dozen bribes, and no guarantee of success.""What's the easy way?""Liberally placed high explosives."

The problem is thinking about success in terms of WoW. You can't do that. You'd only hurt yourself shooting for those numbers (hi, Warhammer). You can have a fraction of WoW's userbase numbers and still be successful with subscriptions. Can you match WoW's scale and polish with a tenth of the userbase (like, say, City of Heroes)? No. But you can still have a successful game.

On the PS3 you can pay $15.95 a month for a 1 game rental policy. (gamefly) You can play 1 completely new game a month for the same price you can play DCO each month.

Comparing this game to wow is the least of their problems. They are seriously over pricing this game.

I can't imagine any new mmo that's subscription based doing well. I think WoW pushed it to the limit and now the genre has to change. Since so many people have had WoW accounts (or still do), I can't see anyone subbing a new one that has generally the same mechanics. MMO 2.0 has been played to death. The genre needs to change or be updated to something more engrossing for people to willingly pay a monthly sub. Until that happens, the MMO 2.0 market will continue to decline.